


Ouroboros

by acornsandravens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Disguise, F/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornsandravens/pseuds/acornsandravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds him again at the inn at the crossroads and takes to watching him in disguise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: spoilers past season 3/AFFC, GRRM-verse appropriate mentions of past violence, and gratuitous references to Acorn Hall.

He is much the same as he ever was, she thinks.

He is still tall and broad—taller, broader, even. His dark hair is constantly untidy from where he rakes his fingers through it or brushes the sweat from his forehead during the day, his brows drawn like two black disapproving slashes to match his scowl. His eyes are still blue as a winter rose but they’re different, too. Not serious like they’d once been, or laughing when he’d tease her. They are the hurt, angry eyes of someone who knew pain and loss and she wondered, with the weight of her sword heavy at her waist, who it was that had given him that look.

He glares at a tankard of ale with all the intensity of a maester studying the stars, but he barely drinks it. He frowns into it when he swallows, like the very action of subsisting is a personal affront to him and the muscles in his jaw so tight she wonders how he gets the drink past his teeth.

He comes there every evening, dragging himself in from the forge like he carries his anvil tied to his back.

She comes there every evening with the lightness of a cat’s foot, the weight of a shadow, her soul soaring like a fistful of feathers in the breeze.

She comes there every evening as though she is not really there at all, and she watches him. His name is a whisper that echoes in her ears, Gendry, Gendry, Gendry.

In spite of herself, it is his name that she thinks and not her own discarded titles, Arry, Arya, m’lady, though she shouldn’t think those any more than she should press herself into the dark corner of an inn and stare at the stains on the floor where she’d once killed two men and left them to bleed, or wonder what his eyes would look like if she let herself stand in front of him now.

But that isn’t entirely true. She stands in front of him often, just to see, she tells herself.

There is a woman who looks after the place, tall, with hair the color of dirt and a drawn look to her that likely comes from war and the stubborn blacksmith who doesn’t ever look at her when she sets a plate in front of him, who only tenses when she pats his shoulder reassuringly and leaves him.

Because he doesn’t ever look at her, or the haggard whore or the pretty young one who doesn’t even bother to smile at him in invitation anymore.

When Arya steps inside the inn she is always someone else. She has been brown haired, black haired, golden haired with an easy laugh. She has had beautiful long red hair that fell to her waist and reminds her of her mother and her sister when she twists it into clumsy plaits. She has been a farmer’s wife, a serving girl run from a lord too free with his affections, she has been half a hundred different lies and each one is like a shiver, a pang, when she steps over the place where the Tickler had fallen and Gendry’s eyes settle on her, searching, suspicious.

And Arya is running out of faces.

It is a dangerous game, seeing how close she can get, but it is a game she can’t seem to stop playing. She is stuck here at this crossroads just as he is, suspended in a never ending loop of strangers and old friends and things that might have been.

Tonight she has hair the color of amber and eyes like silver, and she watches his knuckles tighten around the blade of his eating knife in reaction when she stands on a faded bloodstain and glances his direction, not sure if the feeling in her gut is excitement or apprehension.

She asks the tall woman for a cup of wine and some bread and cheese and picks at the mold on the latter while his eyes burn through her and his meal grows cold in front of him, forgotten, unimportant. She has gone too far tonight, or perhaps not far enough, and when she moves he follows her outside into the night and it doesn’t matter what she looks like because it is too dark for seeing, now.

Her feet move instinctually, decisively, and she moves through the obscurity until she reaches the only bright spot save the moon, the soft orange glow of his fires.

She’d followed him to a forge once, a thousand years ago. And now, when one of his heavy arms grabs her and shoves her against the wall, roughly, she remembers a torn dress.

“Who are you?” he demands, his forearm pressing painfully against her collarbone and just hard enough so she knows he can cut off her breath if he wishes.

His eyes are hard and unforgiving, but she has forgotten what fear means. “Who do you think I am?” she counters.

He still looks pained when he thinks. “A spectre.” He snarls, his breath warm against her cheek and smelling like that ale he forces down with spite best reserved for an enemy. “A trick. Something cruel to punish me for—“

He stops himself then, and presses his lips in a tight line. “Who?”

“A hundred and none,” she says, wincing when his arm presses tighter against her chest. Its weight bruises her ribs but it’s a strange sense of exhilaration, having him close enough to touch. He curses at her, and the weight of his body crushes against her.

His fingers are rough when they tangle in her hair, like he expects it isn’t real, and she hisses at the prickle along her scalp. “Ghosts don’t breathe. Ghosts don’t feel pain, they don’t bleed.”

“No,” she corrects. “They do.” She’d once been the Ghost of Harrenhal, and she’d bled dearly since.

“You’re lying.”

“I am a lie,” she tells him, pressing back against him defiantly. “I am deceit.”

“No,” A rough hand creeps down her side and finds the hilt of a blade, wrenches it away. “Not as long as someone can see the truth.”

She swallows, tilts her chin to look at him. “What do you see?”

“I see a girl who still slouches her shoulders when she doesn’t want to be seen.” He said softly, and she wriggled unconsciously, drawing herself to her full height and straightening her spine to prove him wrong. “I see a girl who moves quick as a snake and quiet as a shadow but looks like a queen when she walks. I see a sword of castle-forged steel that’s too short for you but you keep at your side, probably even when you sleep. I see the eyes of a lord’s daughter who once killed two men in the room where I eat my supper every night.”

He levels the accusation smoothly, in an even voice in spite of the way she can feel a slight tremble in his hand, where he seems to forgotten he’s left it splayed over her waist. He is warm in contrast to the chill of the night air, and she is reluctant to move from the shelter of his body though she should. She should throw the heel of her palm into his nose and knee him between the legs and twist away from him, but she doesn’t.

Her eyes drop, like not looking at him will hide what he’d always been able to see, but it’s too late to hide. It is years too late to hide from Gendry, and when she raises her eyes again they are darker, the color of iron. Her amber hair fades to a dull, listless chestnut, and for all the women she’s ever been she has never felt as beautiful as Arya Stark, standing in Gendry’s arms, with him looking at her with life in his eyes again.

She doesn’t dare to blink when he kisses her, afraid he’ll disappear if she does. He pulls her closer to the fire, never letting their lips part, and he watches her when he slides the ragged cloak off her shoulders and tastes the beat of her heart against his tongue when he presses a kiss to the delicate, vulnerable place on her neck she bares to him.

They’ve been going around in circles for months, she thinks, and it’s only fitting that this circle should start again where it had begun: on the dirty floor of a smithy, with the two of them and a torn dress.


End file.
